Breakfast Of Champions -- Or The Oppressive Male Hierarchy?

HUMOR

August 6, 2004|By Dave Barry

I have received a disturbing letter from Mr. Frank J. Phillips, who describes himself as both a patriot and a Latin teacher.

I didn't realize we still had Latin teachers, but I'm glad we do, because contrary to what you think (and as a member of the news media, I know exactly what you think) Latin is not just an old dead language spoken by old dead guys. In fact, Latin is the "mother tongue" (or "alma mater") of our own language (English): Many of the words and phrases we use every day are actually of Latin origin, including "etc.," "kazoo," "Roman numeral," "Caesar salad," "No way!" and "bling bling."

But Mr. Phillips did not write to me about Latin. He wrote to me about a troubling thing he has noticed; namely -- and here I will quote Mr. Phillips -- "the complete male domination of the breakfast-cereal cartoon-spokes- character world."

Now many individuals, confronted with a social injustice of this magnitude, would choose to look the other way. But Frank J. Phillips is not "many individuals." He wrote a petition to the cereal companies and circulated it at his school, St. Mary's School in Medford, Ore., where many students signed the petition out of what I assume was a sincere desire to keep Mr. Phillips distracted from attempting to teach them Latin.

Some of the students also wrote letters expressing their deep innermost feelings about this issue. "As a young girl," wrote one young girl, "I subconsciously grew to dislike cereal because I felt that I could not identify with the characters that represented cereal."

I know what you're thinking now. You're thinking: "Dave, are you insane? Our nation is struggling to deal with war, worldwide terrorism, a mounting budget deficit, a health-care crisis and some very questionable votes on American Idol. With all these serious problems facing us, how can you possibly ignore the Honey Nut Cheerios Honey Bee? Surely you wouldn't call it a male?"

No, I would not. I would call it gender-neutral. And as the father of a 4-year-old girl, I frankly do not want my daughter to grow up in a world where her cereal-spokesperson role model is an asexual bee.

Speaking of which, does anybody know why, when we explain human sexuality to young people, we refer to it as "the birds and the bees?" I am an observant person who has spent many hours outdoors, and I have never once seen a bird or a bee have sex.

Uh-oh: That's the Digression Alarm Horn, warning us that we have drifted dangerously far from our column topic, which as you may recall is the appalling lack of female breakfast-cereal cartoon spokescharacters. I know I speak for literally billions of Americans when I say: It has gone on long enough! This column, I mean.